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The federal agency that sells and transmits most electrical power in the Northwest has proposed a plan to cover half of wind producers' lost revenue when they're forced to shut down wind farms during periods of excess hydropower production. The plan would affect Cowlitz PUD, which owns interests in two Central Washington wind farms, but would not lower or raise rates significantly, PUD officials said. "This is not going to do anything that would appear to be a rate-driver," PUD spokesman Dave Andrew said Wednesday. Over the objections of wind energy producers, the federal Bonneville Power Administration last spring ordered...

Global investment in clean energy reached a new high of $260 billion (€203 billion) last year, despite the financial crisis and the anti-environment agenda of Republicans in the US Congress, a United Nations investors' summit was told on Thursday (12 January). Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which tracks clean energy investment, showed a 5% increase compared with 2010, driven largely by a surge of money going to the solar industry. Investment in solar power rose 36% last year to $136.6 billion. And while the US domestic political scene was riven by the furore over a $535-million government loan to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most detailed data yet on emissions of heat-trapping gases show that U.S. power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed for global warming. Power plants released 72 percent of the greenhouse gases reported to the Environmental Protection Agency for 2010, according to information released Wednesday that was the first catalog of global warming pollution by facility. The data include more than 6,700 of the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gases, or about 80 percent of total U.S. emissions. According to an Associated Press analysis of the data, 20 mostly coal-fired power plants in...

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist. In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required...

Conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed outraged Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions in a four-year battle with an Idaho couple who want to build a house on land the EPA says contains sensitive wetlands.

Stacy Lynne educates We Are Change Colorado about the International Council on LOCAL Environmental Initiatives. An arm of the United Nations Agenda 21 and how they are using "GREENWASHING" to take over America

With the Seattle City Council expected to vote on a plastic bag ban Monday, is it time to bid farewell to something Seattleites use 292 million of a year? The bill would banish single-use, carryout bags in not just grocery stores, but department stores, clothing stores, liquor stores, drug stores and home improvement stores. Customers would be able to buy paper bags from retailers for 5 cents each. Customers on food assistance would be exempted from that charge. With seven of nine council members sponsoring the bill – and support from environmental and grocery-store groups – the future doesn’t look...

An endangered listing for the DSL would ruin the oil drilling industry in the Permian Basin, that area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico that produces about 20% of all the oil from the lower 48 states and 5% of total oil produced in the US. The oil produced there also constitutes 68% of all oil produced in the state of Texas.

Last year, a medical-technology firm called Numira Biosciences, founded in 2005 in Irvine, California, packed its bags and moved to Salt Lake City. The relocation, CEO Michael Beeuwsaert told the Orange County Register, was partly about the Utah destination’s pleasant quality of life and talented workforce. But there was a big “push factor,” too: California’s steepening taxes and ever-thickening snarl of government regulations. “The tipping point was when someone from the Orange County tax [assessor] wanted to see our facility to tax every piece of equipment I had,” Beeuwsaert said. “In Salt Lake City at my first networking event...

Increase in critical habitat for a rare spotted frog ...

A nonprofit backed by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) spent more than $2 million in federal funds to provide environmental education to Philadelphia high school students - including trips to a resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For three years, the Caribbean-American Mission for Research, Education, and Action ran an exchange program for students at Overbrook High School and two island high schools. The Philadelphia students and their adult chaperones stayed at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef beachfront resort, on what the hotel website calls a "luminous white sand beach framed with the majestic turquoise waters of the Caribbean." Fattah's...

WASHINGTON -- Lawsuits filed Thursday that challenge the federal government's approval of a Shell Oil Co. offshore exploration plan present a major test of regulators' power to swiftly review deep-water drilling blueprints. In two separate but overlapping filings, conservationists argue the government was bound by federal law to first finish a post-spill environmental study of the Gulf of Mexico before approving Shell's plan last month. The legal complaints were filed in the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — one by the Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the other by Earthjustice,...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A group of attorneys using children and young adults as plaintiffs plans to file legal actions in every state and the District of Columbia today in an effort to force government intervention on climate change. The courtroom ploy is backed by high-profile activists looking for a legal soft spot to advance a cause that has stumbled in the face of stiff congressional opposition and a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court. The goal is to have the atmosphere declared for the first time as a "public trust" deserving special protection. That's a concept previously used to clean up polluted...

According to a recently released German study, the supposed "environmentally friendly" compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's), are reported to have "cancer causing chemicals" that are sent out when the light is switched on, reports London's Daily Telegraph: Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on. Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin's Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight. Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining...

There isn't much constructive activity the radical environmentalist bureaucracy won't prevent — not even guarding the border from drug cartels and economically unsustainable hordes of colonists: Federal land managers in Arizona, where about half of all illegal alien apprehensions took place in 2010, denied a U.S. Border Patrol station permission to build a road deemed necessary for "achieving or maintaining operational control" of an area along the southwest border. According to an April 15 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), land managers, including officials from the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, denied permission to build the road...

Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life. ~ Dr. Harold Lewis Ten days ago, Harold Lewis, Ph.D., emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, tendered his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr., Princeton University, president of the American Physical Society, because Dr. Lewis finally realized that he could no longer support what he called the "successful pseudo-scientific fraud" of global warming. Remember, to the Democratic Party and RINO Republicans, truth doesn't matter, because to them truth is relative. All that matters to liberals and...

California and five other states are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let them sue power companies whose plants emit greenhouse gases, saying legal action is needed as a backup for the Obama administration's embattled efforts to curb pollution that contributes to global warming. The case, to be argued April 19, pits the states and environmental organizations against an unusual alliance: the energy industry, which opposes the emissions limits, and the Obama administration, which says such restrictions should be imposed by Congress and federal agencies, not the courts. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to issue regulations in May 2012 that...

The United Nations will call on Monday for 2% of worldwide income to be invested in the green economy, a move it says would boost jobs and economic growth. The call is expected to be matched by statements of support for low-carbon investment from heads of state including President Barack Obama of the US and Hu Jintao of China, and several chiefs of multinational companies. An investment of 2% of global GDP would more than pay for itself in the form of millions of new jobs, the development of new industries, health benefits from cleaner air, energy efficiency savings and...

(CN) - Environmentalists say the federal government's new forest planning rules fail to protect species and habitat and put too much power in the hands of forest managers who have abused their discretion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, citing a need for efficiency and flexibility, unveiled new rules intended to replace regulations established in the 1980s for nearly 200 million federal acres. The proposal, which the U.S. Forest Service released last week, would cover 193 million acres in 155 forests and 20 grasslands in the National Forest system. The Forest Service is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture....

ASPEN — He may have been preaching to the choir, but former Vice President Al Gore stirred an Aspen audience Friday with a passionate speech about the effects of global warming, at one point pounding his fist on the podium and declaring it “a moral issue.” (snip) It didn't help, Gore said, that the scientific community committed some “self-inflicted wounds.” That was a reference to mistakes and misstatements in an IPCC report four years ago that led to a large amount of political debate and media attention. “I think the mistakes were blown way way out of proportion,” Gore said....

Earlier this winter, Oregon regulators sealed a deal to shut down the coal-fired power plant in Boardman by 2020.  Now the one other large coal-fired power plant in the Northwest is in the political cross hairs....posted using frpa

Oregon Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli doesn't cotton to foreigners offering legislative advice. When Louise du Toit, a singer from South Africa living in Greece, wrote the John Day Republican asking him to oppose a bill sponsored by Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, that would remove wolves from Oregon's endangered species list, Ferrioli whipped out this reply: "Are you kidding? Why do you expect that input from [European Union] residents make any difference at all to me? I'll be supporting Dr. Whitsett's bill (he is a VETERINARIAN). By the way, perhaps I should be writing to EU ministers to stop...

-snip- Professor David Shearman, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Adelaide, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and Law School. Professor Shearman was an Assessor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report and the Fourth Assessment Report. (1) Shearman has penned several books on global warming, such as ‘Climate Change as a Crisis in World Civilization: Why We Must Totally Transform How We Live’ and ‘The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy’. His argument is that overpopulation and industrialization are causing an ecological disaster which...

The battle over whether oil companies should be allowed to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is nothing new — but the fight over nearby public land called the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is. The NPRA is huge — about the size of Indiana. Originally, it was set aside for the military, then in the 1970s it was reserved for domestic oil production. Today, there are a few native villages in the NPRA, and about 30 wells have been drilled there — but it is mostly undisturbed. The federal government is working on a plan to guide future drilling there,...

Putting the words "hexavalent chromium" and "drinking water" in the same sentence sounds like a recipe for people to worry. And a report released Monday by the Environmental Working Group sounded the alarm on chromium lurking in the taps of 31 U.S. cities got people fired up. The group figured some 74 million Americans drink water containing a cancer-causing form metal. But how concerned should we be about the findings from the study? We asked Dr. Robert Baratz, an expert on metal exposure who teaches at the Boston University and Tufts University Schools of Medicine, to give us some context....

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Geoscientists want everyone, including policymakers, to understand their work and its possible ramifications for society. But on Wednesday, an overflow crowd of 400 at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting here received some practical advice about getting the message out. "Communication with the public is not a monologue, it's a dialogue," said Princeton University climatologist Michael Oppenheimer. "We should get used to being public people." Climate scientist Jay Gulledge of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia, said, "There used to be arguments in sessions like this between those who said, 'Keep your nose clean,'...

With reports predicting brutally-cold weather to envelop much of the U.S. in the coming weeks, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations could make it harder for Americans to stay warm. According to the National Center for Public Policy, the EPA’s regulatory war on greenhouse gas emissions will drastically increase costs for the majority of Americans who get their heat generated from coal. Coal happens to be the chief emitter of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, making it the EPA’s public enemy number one. And in absence of a comprehensive energy bill, the agency’s strategy has instead been to regulate and cap...

WASHINGTON — With energy legislation shelved in the United States and little hope for a global climate change agreement this year, some policy experts are proposing a novel approach to curbing global warming: including greenhouse gases under an existing and highly successful international treaty ratified more than 20 years ago. The treaty, the Montreal Protocol, was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals that were blowing a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. But as the signers of the protocol convened the 22nd annual meeting in Bangkok on Monday, negotiators are considering...

The plan articulates that environmentally literate students, upon graduation, will demonstrate proficiency in each of the following areas: * Understand the physical and biological world and our interdependent relationship with it * Understand and apply systems thinking concepts and tools * Understand one’s relationship to the local, regional, national and global community * Investigate options for, plan and create a sustainable future * Understand and achieve personal and civic responsibility Oregon’s Environmental Literacy Plan will be submitted to the Oregon legislature and considered for full adoption by the State Board of Education later this year. To implement the plan, Oregon...

European wind developers are fleeing the EU's expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States. -snip- In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.

Unlike Other Devices, Power Packs May Not Enjoy Major Economies of Scale The push to get electric cars on the road is backed by governments and auto makers around the world, but they face a big hurdle: the stubbornly high cost of the giant battery packs, which can account for more than half the cost of an electric vehicle. Both the industry and government are betting that a quick takeoff in electric-car sales will drive down the battery prices. But a number of scientists and automotive engineers believe cost reductions will be hard to come by. Unlike with tires or...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 7,000 events are planned in 188 countries for this Sunday's Global Work Party, a day of action coordinated by 350.org to push politicians to take action on climate change. There are more than 400 work parties planned across California, a broad show of support for clean energy solutions in advance of a contentious election. "Politicians may still be debating climate change, but citizens are getting to work solving it," said Bill McKibben, renowned environmental author and founder of 350.org "I'm tired of sitting around and watching politicians argue," said Actress Ellen Page, who sent...

Proving that some things are impossible to satirize, the British environmentalist group 10:10 has produced a short propaganda film that at first glance appears to be something that Rush Limbaugh would've created to mock environmental extremism. Oh, but it's not. 10:10, which gets its name from the goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent annually starting in 2010, means it for real. The four-minute commercial, which can be found here , is called "No Pressure" and is divided into three main segments: a teacher with her class of middle schoolers, a corporate pep-talk in an office building lobby,...

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 30 -- The American Petroleum Institute, National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, and US Chamber of Commerce moved on Sept. 29 to intervene in two environmental organizations’ lawsuit seeking to keep the US Department of Defense from using fuel produced from Canadian oil sands. The Sierra Club and the Knoxville, Tenn.-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy sued DOD, its energy support center, and its logistics agency on June 18 in US District Court for Northern California. Their suit also named US Defense Sec. Robert M. Gates and the two divisions’ leaders as defendants. The action alleged that the...

Today, a group called the 10.10 project came out with a pro-environmental video which has gathered a LOT of negative publicity. The group has since issued the canonical retrenchment-couched-as-an-apology "to those who really deserve this, but who are clueless enough to have admitted their guilt by being offended, we are sorry you're stupid". But, uncharacteristically, the group has ONLY pulled the video from its own website, and is making no effort to scrub it from the web at large. (Which is probably a good thing, as the video has gone viral within twelve hours). What is the video? You can...

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 28 -- Reviews of the coastal plain and two other study areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for possible federal wilderness designation will begin now that initial public comments have been gathered for updating ANWR’s 1988 comprehensive conservation plan, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said on Sept. 27. The three areas comprise almost all of ANWR’s acreage that is not already wilderness, according to FWS’s Region 7 office in Anchorage. The coastal plain is believed to have substantial petroleum resources but is presently off-limits for leasing, development, or any other oil and gas activity. FWS...

BOISE, Idaho — Forty environmental groups told Northwest lawmakers they want a "full project assessment" of oil equipment transports through Idaho and Montana to tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Exxon Mobil has proposed more than 200 oversized shipments weighing up to 300 tons starting this winter from the inland port city of Lewiston along a narrow mountain highway on their way to the Kearl Oil Sands.

The prospect of even a small exploration drilling program near the site of one of the worst U.S. natural disasters in modern memory has environmentalists blowing their tops. As Ascot Resources announced they have begun exploration drilling on the Mt. Margaret property , a former Duval Corp. property located in the St. Helens Mining District of Skamania County in Washington State, Oregon-based environmentalists say even Ascot's small drilling program has no business disturbing the Mount St. Helens National Monument.

Screw you NC government.

SEATTLE — A federal judge is requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to revise a Bush administration recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, and the federal agency said Thursday it plans to release a draft next week. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled Wednesday that the federal agency must come up with a revised recovery plan within nine months for the threatened bird, which has been at the center of a long battle over logging in the Northwest because it lives in old growth forests. The judge also required revisions to the owl's critical habitat, which...

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- Greenpeace said about 500,000 Facebook users have urged the world's largest online social network to abandon plans to buy electricity from a coal-based energy company for its new data center in the U.S. Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo sent a letter Wednesday to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warning that the company risked its reputation and financial health if it ignored the environmental impacts of its actions.

Story at link: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/18/2897609/californias-pioneering-e-waste.html#ixzz0u9NMWP00

The author of a damning study about the failure of Spain's "green jobs" program — a story broken here at PJM — received the threatening package on Tuesday from solar energy company Thermotechnic.....

Kathryn Klaber, the executive director of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, said, "Our understanding, based on previews of the film, is that it’s loaded with misleading claims and untruths, and completely fails to recognize the well-known fact that hydraulic fracturing has been used in this state for a half-century, and according to state and federal regulators, has never once been found to adversely impact the public’s underground drinking water supplies."

Money may not grow on trees, but it sure cost taxpayers a bundle to move a bush that was found growing in the path of the Doyle Drive rebuild. Not just any bush - this was the Franciscan manzanita, a city native that was thought for 60 years to be extinct until the bush was spotted late last year. With the final bills in, the cost of moving the bush in January came to $175,000 - $140,000 to dig up and move the shrub, and $35,000 for "support" services from geological, botanical and climate experts in preparation for its new...

The EPA's Shocking Power GrabThe agency is making federal decisions without the consent of Congress George Allen and Marlo Lewis, 05.18.10, 04:16 PM EDT The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out one of the biggest power grabs in American history. The agency has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate policy for the nation and amend the Clean Air Act--powers never delegated to it by Congress. It has done this by declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, in a proceeding known as the "endangerment finding." On Tuesday the U.S. Senate will debate and...

In an article I posted on my blog and expanded on freerepublic I mentioned that Chef Gordon Ramsay demanded that government establish dietary standards and force people to eat what THEY thought was best and to punish them through taxes and other means. In particular he attacked parents of obese children. Many of these children in fact suffer from other problems genetic or organic that lead to their obesity. For those unfamiliar, Gordon Ramsay is a world class chef and celebrity known for outbursts and a short temper as well as a filthy mouth. Lately he has also begun to...

Great job on shining the FOX flashlight on man-behind-the-curtain Maurice Strong last night. You asked for people to send you information on Strong.

Apparently Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood thinks he lives in France, or maybe Amsterdam, or some such tiny, closed-in country. That is the only conclusion I can come to with his idiotic statements recently given to CNSNews. On May 3, LaHood announced a snazzy, wondermous, neato and momentous "sea change" in American transportation, a great idea whose time had come. And that great idea was: Everyone should ride a bike to work. Most Americans live between 10 and 25 miles away from their places of work so Americans spend at least a half hour one way in their cars going...